Education

Profile

My favorite things about Northland College are its mission and commitment to higher learning for the sake of the Earth. We are a small college with a unique mission. Our size allows our students and faculty to know one another and work closely together, and our mission commits us to learning with a purpose beyond ourselves. I am researching the nexus of religion and culture, especially current developments in Islam and contemporary divisions within North American Christianity. Also, the rise of modern fundamentalism and the role of religion in American society. I have been both fascinated and repelled by the power of religion for as long as I can remember. Religious and spiritual experience draw us into both the most sublime and the most terrifying arenas of human existence. In the study of religion, I found a discipline dedicated to asking the fundamental questions of our existence, a way of confronting life at its heights and depths. And, I still find within it the possibility of renewing the power of religious symbols so that our distressed and alienated spirits might once again feel authentically at home. I enjoy fly fishing, poetry, river and lake paddling, movies, and art history.